Primarily, I know what is in the food my family eats because I put all those whole ingredients in that dish.

Second, when I make my own food, it generally tastes better than store bought.

And lastly, it is less expensive.

The other bonus is that the more I cook, the more I can make.

But hear this, you don’t have to be a great cook to make simple pantry items that can make a difference in your food flavor, quality and cost.

My family loves hummus. Every two weeks, we would buy and eat two containers of hummus. After months of spending close to $3 on hummus, I started to make it from scratch. The finished spread tastes better, costs about $1.25 for 12 ounces and takes no time to make. Even better, I know that it contains organic chickpeas, lemon juice, tahini, salt, water and garlic. There is nothing in this hummus but real ingredients.

I can even make my own pita chips for the hummus. I buy bulk pita from the Middle Eastern grocery in town, cut, salt and bake them to make low-salt pita chips with very little oil. They are crunchy and flaky; nothing like the bagged pita chips that can crack a tooth and have tons of salt.

Salad dressings are easy. In addition to a good vinaigrette, we make 1000 Island dressing. I used to make it with sweet pickles, ketchup and mayonnaise. Recently I found a fabulous cookbook called “The Kitchen Pantry Cookbook” by Erin Coopey. Her recipe has minced onion, finely chopped pimento and cider vinegar in addition to the ketchup, mayonnaise and sweet pickles. It really tastes great; we use it on salads, avocados and homemade Reuben sandwiches.

Two necessary Florida household sauces are tartar sauce and cocktail sauce. Store-bought tartar sauce usually has corn syrup and is often full of sugar; the cocktail sauce is bland with too much tomato and not enough bite. The homemade tartar sauce uses the surprise ingredients of capers and grated onion. The onion really made a big difference in the flavor, but be careful, the capers need to be added in ½ tablespoon at a time as they can really make it too salty.

The cocktail sauce calls for fresh horseradish. I would caution anyone against bringing home fresh horseradish. The smell (like rotten dirty socks mixed with rotten potatoes) permeated everything in our refrigerator and stayed there for weeks. It even went through plastic bags. The smell accompanied a taste that even went through the milk carton. Upon the urging of my children, I only use prepared horseradish now. The cocktail sauce is really good, even with store-bought horseradish.

Chai tea is a big fad right now and, thanks to a recipe from USA Weekend magazine, we have been making ours at home with a Chai Tea Concentrate. With ingredients like blue agave, fresh ground fennel seeds and ground cloves, the flavor is so much cleaner than any chai tea I have ever had at a fancy coffee shop. Compared to $3 a cup at coffee shops, my version only costs pennies. We freeze small amounts and defrost it as we need more.

We have two coffee grinders in the kitchen, one for coffee and the other for grinding spices. Whenever a recipe calls for ground cumin, I will roast the cumin seeds in a cast iron skillet until they smell aromatic, cool them and then grind them to a fine powder. It ensures the ground spices are fresh and I don’t have to keep both ground and whole spices in my cabinet.

Garam Masala is a spice mixture that can be purchased in the store. It is used for Indian dishes and has a wonderful flavor. I make my own, roasting a few spices and grinding them myself. I always use a separate grinder for the spices as the flavor of the spices can get ingrained in the grinder.

As I try my hand at new pantry items, I find I am amazed how easy it is to make products that are sold in bottles and jars in the market. There is little effort to make these items but the return is powerful.

One sniff of the freshly roasted, ground spices wafting from your new spice grinder and you will never buy another ground spice.

Lisa Waas’ passion for all things culinary fuels her writing. She lives in Fernandina Beach and uses her friends and family as her culinary guinea pigs. Like her facebook page “The Inquisitive Cook,” or email her at lisaphr@bellsouth.net.